Shipra Dawar was doing her MBA in Australia when she felt homesick. Her professor advised therapy, but the stigma attached to this made her think twice before she sought help.

This memory stayed with her and after she came back, she started online counselling platform ePsyclinic.com in May last year, after a brief corporate stint.

Psychiatry is one of the many ‘traditional’ services that once needed face-to-face interaction to have moved online.

The continuous evolution of technology and increasing understanding of the millennial mindset is triggering this change.

“The key word is accessibility. People have very busy lives, so much that they have to make time even for consultation,” said Dawar.

“This is a tech-savvy, WhatsApp generation, so the best solution is to bring this (counselling) online. They want quick but helpful counselling sessions. They like to text — writing down your own thoughts is therapeutic.” ePsyclinic, which got 45 clients in its first month, now has around 70 a day.

Ritu Soni Srivastava’s experience with losing weight after pregnancy resulted in weight-loss app Obino. Srivastava feels that tech affords convenience. The weight-loss coach is available at all times, in contrast with the hurried appointments with a dietician.

“I can say anything to a programme,” Srivastava said. “People are much more honest about their diets and regimes on an app than a face-to-face interaction, because they do not feel intimidated.

In face-to-face interactions, there is always a jockeying of power. The online method leads to better compliance.” Her plan is to match coach and user based on temperament and behavioural patterns, thereby providing better results.

Evolving technolog

Evolving technology provides standardisation of service and scale. Ask Archit Gupta, CEO of Y-Combinator-backed ClearTax, which helps in efiling of tax returns.

“Can we use deep learning and machine learning to help people file the correct tax returns?” Gupta asked, answering his own question. “That decision was taken by experts before. Now it is taken by an ‘expert machine.’ Machines are dispassionate and precise, so they make very few mistakes.”